


In Perfect Truth

by RecessiveJean



Category: The Veritas Project Series - Frank Peretti
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Brother-Sister Relationships, Character of Faith, Childhood, Crisis of Faith, Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Panic Attacks, Rituals, Sharing a Bed, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 04:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecessiveJean/pseuds/RecessiveJean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elisha never wonders. Elijah never did, until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Perfect Truth

They create the game when they are four years old, one sweet summer night when sunset tarries and the red and rose-gold streaks across the sky taunt them with their preschool curfew.

Elijah knows the sun will be back next year, same place, very nearly same time, 365.25636 mean solar days from now. He and Elisha will be that much older, and maybe their bedtime will be later, but their orbit of the sun is a constant and Elijah likes what he can measure.

This is the night it starts, this night that isn't yet, the unused sunlit end of a perfect summer day. This is the night Elisha, her hair still damp from evening bathwater, pokes his arm and issues a challenge.

"Tell me something, 'lijah."

"Sure." He waits to hear what she wants to know, then realises she’s waiting, too. "Tell you what?"

She shrugs with one shoulder and scratches a bug-bitten knee. "Something true."

That makes sense. Truth is what she loves more than anything in the world, and Elijah will never lie to her. He chooses the very best truth he knows.

"I love you.”

She smiles, a bright little star with sky-blue eyes and night-black hair, and wraps the truth around her like a hug.

"I know."

That's when it's still easy.

"Tell me something, 'lijah," she whispers in the dark, night after night as they grow. Though he knows by now, he asks her anyway.

"Tell you what?"

"Something true."

"Jesus reigns," he says, and she nods, because that's what everyone they know believes, so it must be true. They can't all be wrong.

"I know."

It's so easy. The words taste good: _I know_.

She doesn't ask him every night. This isn't like washing your face or brushing your teeth. It's a game. You play it when something slips, a mask falls, a word seems wrong, and the words "I know" need to be said into the dark so you can feel sure again. On those nights, lots of nights, the Earth spins steady and true while they lie under a big Montana sky with the whole universe open above them. She cuddles beside him beneath endless space and makes her plea.

"Tell me something, 'lijah."

"Tell you what?"

"Something true."

It's a new truth every time. He tells her about Pi and the boiling point of water. He tells her that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, that a circle has 360 degrees always, every time, and that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Sometimes he teases her, tells her that she'll always be five minutes younger, no matter what. He pulls her hair and pokes her ribs until she says "jerk" which is twin-sister code for "I love you" and they both know that without it ever being said.

There are the extra-easy truths sometimes, too. He tells her those on the nights he’s too tired to think of something extra-true, but too awake to ever want to let Elisha down. “We’re inside right now,” he says, or, “we had spaghetti for supper.” These are truths so easy, he doesn’t have to think twice.

“Mom and Dad love us.”

That one’s so easy it’s almost cheating.

"God loves you" is another especially easy truth, because everybody says that one. Everybody _wants_ it to be true.

( _God loves you but maybe you'll go to Hell_ isn't easy, so he never says it. Besides, he doesn't believe that one anyway. Not about Elisha)

"God loves you," he promises, fullstop. Elisha beams, sunburnt, wind-kissed, loved.

"I know."

And so it goes. It's easy, always easy. Until one night it isn't anymore.

It's Elisha’s first night home from the hospital, the spider venom out of her system, the truth of her existence still something that came so close to being made un-true that he can’t think about it directly. Not yet.

They're all home tonight, their parents even more exhausted than they, already sound asleep. The door to his room is closed but he hears her out there anyway.

"'Leesha?" he calls, and she opens the door, crosses the room and burrows under the blankets beside him.

"What's up?" he wonders. "Besides you."

She only shakes her head.

"Elisha?" He’s worried, now.

Softly, awfully, she gasps. "Elijah . . . Elijah I'm scared to sleep."

"Fear is a stronghold of the enemy," he reminds her. That's the lesson they were taught, and Elijah knows his lessons. But even better than lessons he knows his sister, and as soon as he says it, he knows it's not what she needs to hear.

"Should I pray?" Her voice cracks on the third word.

The right answer is _yes_. He should offer to pray with her; reclaim her heart and spirit for Jesus, and rebuke the devil. But he's already said the right thing, the should-thing, and it wasn't the thing she needed. He doesn't make the same mistake twice.

"Only if you want to.” He pauses. “Do you?"

She shakes her head and whimpers. He can picture her face scrunching around her pain and confusion, and his own scrunches in response.

"It’s okay, ‘leesha . You don’t have to pray.” He rubs her shoulder. “Why can't you sleep?"

"I'm scared. It’s the spider, and lying there in the dark, and thinking I’ll never see you and Mom and Dad again. Every time I try to go to sleep, I think . . . I think if I do, I won't ever wake up again."

It could be demons; the devil, trying to attack her. Those are the things they've been taught make you feel this way ( _perfect love casts out fear, so if you’re scared, it's probably demons_ ). Maybe their victory at the high school made Satan angry, so he's trying to weaken her conviction.

Except . . .

This is Elisha. This is his sister. He knows her better than he knows anything else in the world. If some stupid demon were trying to attack her, he'd _know_. There's no demon here. There's just him and her and she is scared.

But he can fix that.

"You want to stay here?"

They haven't shared a bedroom in six years, not under ordinary circumstances, but they both know, have always known, that nightmares come easier in an empty room.

"Yeah," she whispers, so he fits his arm under her neck and pulls her close. She sighs, whisper-soft, and he feels her fear bleed away. Her head rides his chest with every breath he draws, and he thinks she must be near sleep when:

"Tell me something, 'lijah."

How long has it been since they played that game? He smoothes her hair back from her forehead, still filmed with panic's sweat.

"Tell you what?"

"Something true."

And he thinks it's funny, in the way that things are funny but really actually aren't, because this is their life, the truth, and the search for it. Mom and Dad have told them all the things that are true and they've taught them how to argue hard, vicious, merciless against anybody who says that other things might be _true instead_ , or even _true as well_ , because the truth is fragile like that, and somehow selfish. The truth needs defending, and it can’t share space with another truth. He doesn’t know _why_ that is. He just _knows_.

So it should be easy to answer because Elijah is used to protecting the fragility of truth, and he carries taught truths in his head like they're a math lesson, ensuring their rightful place is never supplanted by an additional truth that isn’t quite true enough. But the darkness yawns above him, like the threat of a life without Elisha, without his other half ( _don’t think it, don’t think it, don’t think it_ ) and just like that, like someone flipped a switch, Elijah doesn't _know_ anymore.

The silence spreads, sticky, dark. His sister stirs against him, awakening to his discomfort.

"Elijah?"

Her uncertainty sparks something in him, a tiny light that flickers, the understanding that even if you don't know everything, even if you don't know _anything_ , there are still some things you can never forget.

Some things are always true.

He holds her close and makes a gift of the truth he whispers in her ear.

"I'm here, Elisha. So are you."

She sighs, soothed, and sinks back against him. "I know." She savours the favoured words. "I know."

 _That’s good_ , he thinks. _Because I think maybe . . . I don’t, anymore_.

It's the one truth he can never tell her.

It’s the one truth she would never understand.

**Author's Note:**

> All characters and settings are the property of their creator. No infringement is intended.


End file.
